says, _Arduus hic Acragas ostendit maxima longe moenia_. I have already directed your attention to the fact that _moenia_ signifies “large buildings in a city;” the walls of Agrigentum had nothing striking, and parts of them ran in the valley, so that Virgil cannot have alluded to them. The buildings of the city were not yet quite completed when they were destroyed in the Carthaginian war; they were much larger than those at Syracuse or any other of the Greek towns of Sicily. Before the war in Olymp. 93, Agrigentum was the wealthiest city in the island; but the stories of the riches of particular citizens, as, for example, of Gellias, which Diodorus relates after Timaeus, are quite fabulous, for Timaeus was credulous. In Olymp. 93, Agrigentum was taken and completely destroyed by the Carthaginians; the town was defended in the most unfortunate manner, or not defended at all: the Greek generals during that war were so wretched and senseless, that the Agrigentines had enough to do in trying to save themselves, leaving their city with all its treasures a prey to the enemy. It was afterwards restored indeed, but the new town was only a shadow of what it had been before. In consequence of the treaties by which Selinus was ceded to the Carthaginians, Agrigentum was re-united with the Greek part of Sicily, of which Syracuse, under Dionysius and Timoleon, was the capital. Afterwards the character of the wars between the Greeks and Carthaginians was no longer as destructive as it had been before, for Carthage was satisfied with subduing and ruling over the Greek towns. After the reign of Agathocles, Agrigentum again fell into the hands of the Carthaginians. In the first Punic war, it was taken by the Romans, and on that occasion one part of its inhabitants made their escape, while others perished or were sold as slaves. Towards the end of the Punic war, it was again implicated in an insurrection against the Romans, in consequence of which it became so desolate that the Romans, to prevent the complete extinction of the place, established there colonists from other Sicilian towns. Agrigentum is indeed mentioned in Cicero’s Verrine orations, but it is clear that it was quite an insignificant town; under the Roman emperors it remained in the same condition, and may have been of little more importance than the modern Girgenti. The gigantic ruins of the ancient city are situated on the plateau of the hill: the severest blow it ever received was that in Olymp. 93, and subsequent earthquakes also contributed to its destruction.